The Paragon Paradox Part Three (Final Part, Honest!): Eliminate 'Er!

Welcome to the final part of my thoughts on 'The Paragon Paradox' - and rest assured, it is the final part. (First part here, second part here.) First, a few words on the artist currently known as Scott Twells - a remarkable talent. I first  encountered his work when he illustrated a yet-to-be-published story of mine for a yet-to-be-disclosed comic. Discussing his work with the editor, it struck me that though his style for that story was deliberately scratchy and cartoonish, it was also blessed with a remarkable sense of composition and some sublime posing. Oddly, Davey Candlish had also sent Scott a short Spencer Nero script to illustrate, which meant he ended up drawing two of my stories in quick succession - before being handed The Paragon Paradox on the strength of 'Spencer Nero Feels Your Pin'. The upshot is that only David Broughton has ever drawn more pages of my scripts* - a gent with whom he shares a similar talent for swiftness, without ever sacrificing quality.

Now for a few random observations:

Part One:

Lettering by Jim Campbell

• The Dalmatian hanging out with Bulldog at the start is called Gooch - this is not a reference to any weird piercing (look it up! No, wait, don't!) but in fact a nod of the head to a book I enjoyed as a child, namely 'Mr. Gooch and the Penny-farthing', a story about some dogs that run a bicycle shop. The lead dog is a Dalmation in a boiler suit.

• Mr. Twells notably places the number '18' on Bulldog's hangar - 'Hangar 18' is, of course, a key song on Megadeth's 'Rust In Peace', one of the greatest albums in the history of the human species. Ergo, I posit that Scott Twells is likely a thrasher of some description.

• Ganesh's foe is a Promethean Eagle - the horrible thing that used to pull Prometheus's regenerating liver out on daily basis. At one point I was going to have Bulldog carried away by the eagle - until I remembered he'd just been carried off by a pterodactyl in his own series a couple of episodes ago!

Part Two:

Lettering by Dave Metcalfe-Carr

• Jikan's arrival line is paraphrased from 'Shogun Assassin', in which Ogami Itto exclaims "They will pay... with rivers of blood!" On reflection this sounded a bit Enoch Powell, so I changed it. It wouldn't have been the most appropriate line for a story in which extradimensional immigrants threaten Britain...

• Ekhidna's changed slightly from James Corcoran's depiction - she's a bit better looking (still got nice cheekbones) and actually closer to what I originally imagined she'd look like.

Part Three:

• It struck me as I reached the end that this story is a Freudian nightmare - a gigantic archetypal mother-figure gets gang-banged mauled by a bunch of macho men. Someone had to articulate it (but not excuse it.)

Lettering by Ken Reynolds

• Bulldog and the big hairy metaphor: Wait a minute - didn't I say in my last post that Bulldog was the most down to earth of the team? Why is he going all metaphorical here? Well, given his lineage and pre-eminent status as small-press icon, I decided he was the best person to articulate the subtext of the story - namely that it's all about the difference between small-press comics and the work of 'the big boys' (as Davey Candlish likes to call them) at Marvel and DC.  Ekhidna represents the latter - constantly repeating herself, squirting out debased copies of myths that once mattered, unable to do anything particularly original but always ready with a new #1. She's finally floored by the PARAGON characters, who of course represent the small-press: varied, versatile, hit-and-miss, off-the-wall and representing the true spirit of their creators. All done in the context of the crossover, that most quintessentially American of comics formats, filtered through PARAGON's 70s/80s Brit sensibility.

And that, as they say, is your lot!

*James Corcoran has drawn the same number as Scott.

Nero @ #13, Part 2: Bon's Caught

 Welcome to the second part of a two-part blog posting about my recent work for PARAGON #13. This bit’s about ‘Spencer Nero Goes South’, which reveals the ‘secret origin’ of Spencer Nero – or at the very least, fills in a key piece of his past. (The previous part, about the Ruthless Rhymer, is here.)

This story serves as the conclusion to the ‘original’ quartet of Spencer Nero stories – that is, the last of the first four full-length story ideas I had when I originally came up with the series. (The one and two-pagers were all written much later.) I have a bit of an obsession with the South Pole, particularly the Terra Nova expedition, and knew from the off that I wanted to set a Spencer Nero story there. My first idea indeed involved Robert Falcon Scott’s party, specifically the ghost of Captain Lawrence Oates, and was going to be called ‘Spencer Nero and the Gallant Gentleman’ after John Charles Dollman’s haunting painting of Oates ‘stepping outside’. The problem, of course, was that I’d already done a story about Spencer encountering the ghost of a dead explorer in ‘Spencer Nero and the White Spider’, so that idea was reluctantly set aside. Likewise, fond as I am of H.P. Lovecraft, I had absolutely no intention of regurgitating the similarly polar ‘At the Mountains of Madness’.

But I did want to pay tribute to Ray Harryhausen, the special effects model-master who sadly passed away not long after the story came out. If there’s an influence present in ‘...Goes South’, then Harryhausen is it, particularly the similarly polar ‘Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger’. Ekhidna, for instance, is a fair amalgam of several of Harryhausen’s beautiful beasts (Medusa via the Kraken, principally – like a ‘Clash of the Titans’ greatest hits.) Plus – hydras, chimeras and great big pigs! What more do you want in a comic? (A decent script? Well, you’re not getting one of those, so just enjoy the beasts.) Let’s pick out a few comment-worthy moments to dwell on– though these are largely just an excuse to showcase the wonderful art of James Corcoran, making his hugely welcome return to the strip.

From the first panel, James shows us this is going to be something special, art-wise – I love the way the boat’s shadow, plus a few floating pieces of ice, create the image of the Janus Mask.

 

 

Here, Bonaventure Nero, Spencer’s uncle, makes his first flashback appearance – it won’t be his last. He and his nephew both derive their names from the actor Spencer Tracy – Bonaventure was Tracy’s middle name. Having Spencer brought up by an uncle whose subsequent fate he feels guilty for may be an unintentional nod to ‘Spider-Man’, although rather than breeding a sense of responsibility in Spencer, the exact opposite happens – it’s his cue to blame everything on someone else!

The Supra-Centurion’s been name-checked several times in the strip to date, but now we find out a little more about the Janus Cult’s master – it turns out he was a bloodthirsty lunatic who fantasised about slaying creatures that didn’t exist. This probably surprises no-one.

 

 

And speaking of creatures - I do like to see a great big pig in my comics. It is a motif of which I’m very fond. The idea of including frightening hogs in my scripts is a nod of the head to my favourite author, William Hope Hodgson, who seemed, as China Mieville put it, “to have had serious misgivings about pigs”. (Read ‘The House on the Borderland’ to see these misgivings in terrifying action.)

More fear with the exquisite Ekhidna – she’s a crowning triumph of James’s art. Going back to the Harryhausen connection, in one of his books, Harryhausen noted that his design for Medusa incorporated horrible features atop a beautiful bone structure – I wanted a bit of that for Ekhidna as well (it seems to have been made manifest in her cheekbones.) James has also given her an extra pair of arms, which just adds to the Dynamation potential of the character. Imagine seeing a stop-motion version of this creature crawling around the Antarctic! The ‘real’ Ekhidna is a genuine monster out of Greek mythology, who did indeed spawn a whole host of abominations – she certainly kept the Greek mythic heroes busy, as her multiple offspring bedevilled Hercules, Theseus, Bellerophon, Prometheus, Perseus, Jason and Odysseus. The father of most of these beasts was the monstrous Typhon –  for my version of Ekhidna, I’ve assumed she can give birth to creatures without needing a mate at all, but the results are less impressive than if they’re fathered by some unfortunate soul.

So, that was ‘Spencer Nero Goes South’ – probably my favourite episode of the strip to date, even if the script does turn into a big mad scramble to cram everything in at the end (let’s just call it an attempt to represent the chaos of battle.) Luckily for me, James’s art really sells the frenetic nature of the denouement, complimenting his cracking creature designs. Beautiful stuff.

Teenage Kicks - PARAGON hits #13!

Yup, PARAGON comic reaches its teens – a bloody impressive tally for a small-press publication, so major kudos to editorial mastermind Davey Candlish for reaching this milestone! As for whether the comic’ll start getting moody and moping about, angsting over girls, remains to be seen. But what is on display, appropriately enough, is a flashback tale featuring a teenaged Spencer Nero, in what amounts to an 8-page ’secret origin’, set at the South Pole. And yes, there’s a spot of girl trouble too, as an... err... older woman comes between Spencer and his uncle. An older woman of mythological proportions... with some rather angry offspring. If you want a better look at her, just check out James Corcoran’s remarkable full frontal reveal or Bhuna’s brilliant, sanity-blasting cover!

And speaking of the talented Bhuna, he also lends his artistic might to another 2-pager, ‘Spencer Nero and the Ruthless Rhymer’. Written, as the name suggests, in verse, this odd little tale celebrates my love of both Rupert the Bear and the utterly black-humoured poet Harry Graham. In it, Spencer takes on a very cross man whose violent means of dealing with pet peeves should in no way be interpreted as wish-fulfilment on the part of the equally grumpy author. Ahem.

I’ll do my usual self-indulgent digging into the entrails of both stories in due course, but first, grab yourself a copy of PARAGON #13 and hold it: hold it tight.  At twenty-eight pages, it’s five-fourteenths me, but don’t let that put you off. It has proper writers too, and all the artists are playing a blinder. If you need excitement and need it bad, PARAGON is here for you.